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hello from a new guy

12-11-2007, 04:41 PM

Hello,
I&#39;m really glad to have found this site. I first found it on you tube looking for the bikini lawn care company. What a great idea&#33; I&#39;ve only been doing this full time now for four or five months now. I used to work with my father when he needed some help in the summer or on some of his bigger jobs for extra cash. He&#39;s done lawn care for the city of Tampa as crew supervisor of the parks department for over thirty years now and still does some small jobs in his off time. He&#39;s taught me alot. I&#39;ve been a hair stylist for seven years. About four and a half months ago me and my girlfriend had a really bad investment deal go bad with this salon "Luxe-Urbain" we were trying to become partners with. We asked her parents to help us invest in the salon so we could become partner/owners of this really cool salon in an area of Tampa that is just blowing up with new business there&#39;s a Imax theater,restaurants, and new loft homes.It was the prime location for us to have ownership in our first salon.We gave these guys seventy thousand dollars of her parents money ten for marketing , new web site color flyers with postage for two mail outs and sixty to help lower the debt they incurred from building the salon. We had them sign a promissory note to pay back the money over a five year span and two months later we went to work as normal and the alarm codes where changed, the alarm went off ,the cops came. Long story short they used our money to pay off there debt and to keep their salon up and running before we signed our partnership agreement. The good side is their making the 1,600.00 payment to my girlfriends parents. And her dad doesn&#39;t hate me.

So any ideas on low cost marketing ? I&#39;ve been flyering with some real simple black and white flyers with my full colored business cards stapled on them.On the back of my cards I have printed "Present this card for &#036;10.00 off your first service". They seem to be doing ok I&#39;ve got about twelve jobs but I&#39;ve put out about four hundred flyers am I doing this right , am I in the wrong areas , or is it just slow right now?
I know there is alot of money to be made in this industry but I need some expert advice on my new business venture .

You guys should see my 2005 Toyota Corolla jammed packed with all my gear.mower,weeder,stick edger,back pack blower,and of corse smelly gas cans. I&#39;ll try to get some pictures up javascript:emoticon(&#39;&#39

Welcome to the forums Gorilla LC...sorry to hear about the salon deal not working out...but it is good to see that you are bouncing back. Have you checked out the flyer templates from gopher located here?

You will find tons of information here and a lot of people willing to help out.

Cheers,

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I&#39;m luke from LG Yard Service and I&#39;m pretty new to the site also. I&#39;m only 14 but am sucessfully running a lawn care business aslo. This is my 2nd year but I still have a lot of questions about marketing, equiptment, and ideas just like you do&#33; welcome to the forum and I hop we can use each of our experience to mantain an amazing lawn service&#33; Feel free to ask any questions( I might not be much help, but I&#39;ll probably learn something out of it too)

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Hey Gorrila LC, and welcome to the Forum... pretty sad wat happend with the Salon, but you only get stronger from this experiences.
I hope you find the answers here, this guys are really helpfull.

Quote[/b] (Gorilla Lawn Care @ Dec. 11 2007,4:41)]am I in the wrong areas , or is it just slow right now?

well, yeah the cold season is here (down in florida) so the grass is just, not growing, but this doesn&#39;t not mean you stop doing some marketing. The trick is that for the marketing to work is that you have to target a Neigborhood, [is more beneficial to send mail to 1 person 6 times than 6 people 1 time], so keeping your name out there, people problably would remember you in the summer.
i.e: hand out flyers in wally-world, then in the next month place some yard signs at the exit or stoplights (this really worked for me).
Good Luck&#33;.

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My first question to you is this. Why lawn care? Why not visit people at their houses and cut their hair? Cut the entire families hair at their home&#33; Since you have that skill can you imagine how great it would be to offer these services&#33;

It would be cheap to experiment with since you wouldn&#39;t have to invest anything and you could simply hand out flyers.

In fact&#33; WAIT&#33; What if you cut hair and cut the lawn&#33; Can you imagine offering both services&#33; That would be so insanely different&#33; Call your business the Lawn Salon or something like that. It&#39;s off the wall but it could really help get you attention and bring you in more money.

Tell us your thoughts&#33;

Quote[/b] ]You guys should see my 2005 Toyota Corolla jammed packed with all my gear.mower,weeder,stick edger,back pack blower,and of corse smelly gas cans. I&#39;ll try to get some pictures up

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javascript:emoticon(&#39;&#39
It&#39;s only been a few hours sense I posted and already I&#39;ve got some great feed back. Thanks guys for the support and ideas.I&#39;m going to try the flyer hand outs and sign by the exit of the store. Great idea&#33; javascript:emoticon(&#39;&#39

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It&#39;s funny you ask .Why lawn care? The day before all that went down I was on line and the opening page to yahoo had the top ten low overhead jobs and I think lawn care company was like second or third .And it was the first thing I thought of when I was trying to come up with ideas for my own business. We&#39;ve put about 1,200.00 in this so far and plan to hopefully get a good mower and trailer by summer.So far not to bad of an investment .It&#39;s all most like being a hair stylist. Your have to market and get your name out to the right people.And of course do good work with proper tools. Oh yeah the hard work thats the only big difference. I&#39;m open to any ideas about the dual service approach. I already do a few clients hair now and I take care of two of their lawns also. I&#39;ll have to send in a picture of the shampoo chair me and my girlfriends dad invented it folds up like a lawn chair with a built in shampoo sink that we&#39;ve connected a small 1/6 hp sump pump to. Its pretty cool and it&#39;s easy to transport. I&#39;m open for ideas .It just seems
hard to get new clients that want hair cuts or color at home . Most of the clients I&#39;ve run into like the experience and all of the atmosphere of a salon. Thats not to say that there isn&#39;t a market for it. We should throw it around for a while and see what people think.

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Quote[/b] ]I&#39;ll have to send in a picture of the shampoo chair me and my girlfriends dad invented it folds up like a lawn chair with a built in shampoo sink that we&#39;ve connected a small 1/6 hp sump pump to. Its pretty cool and it&#39;s easy to transport. I&#39;m open for ideas .It just seems
hard to get new clients that want hair cuts or color at home . Most of the clients I&#39;ve run into like the experience and all of the atmosphere of a salon. Thats not to say that there isn&#39;t a market for it. We should throw it around for a while and see what people think.

Could you create and sell those chairs? It&#39;s easier now than ever to put together a website and sell products online. It is something to consider.

Quote[/b] ]Most of the clients I&#39;ve run into like the experience and all of the atmosphere of a salon.

Could that be because you met them in a salon? Are there other people out there that can&#39;t get around too easily? Maybe they are more elderly? Maybe they have a house full of kids? Is it possible that there is an entirely different group out there that isn&#39;t being serviced?

I am mentioning this because you already have a skill with it and your chair design. It is very unique&#33;

You could sell gift cards people could buy for their parents&#33; Why not mix in nail painting too&#33; Or something like that&#33;

I wonder if there would be less competition by doing something like this. Plus it would be a re-occurring revenue source.

How many lawn care operators are there in your area? How many hair stylists are there in your area that will visit your home?

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We&#39;re going to come up with some test flyers with the ideas of hair and lawn cuts.There&#39;s a big market down here for eldery and they could use someone with my services. The only thing is what do I do about priceing their fixed incomes? And most of their homes are in deed restricted communitys.It seems that most are paying 20 to 35 a vsit .Maybe someone has ideas on how to approach this or how to word the flyers.I just want to make this profitable. *
*

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hey man-
why dont you go out and buy like a dodge sprinter and set up a total mobile salon. They have similar with dog groomers... why not people groomer... hit all the office complexes in the are.... tell them youll be in the parking lot at noon every other tuesday. Alot of companies are offering this... auto glass, auto detail, pet grooming.... I think it might be something to think about.... you can call it "Mobile People Groomers" - shave, waxing, haircutting, message. ####, buy yourself a used camper trailer.... like the tow behind kind... you can give them tea... rock a complementary message chair.... low lighting....I know sirius radio offers channel spa 73.... relaxing music and all&#33;&#33;&#33; Now im all stoked on this idea, maybe ill find me a hot hairdressing chick to "get into bed with me" on this idea.... Whatever you end up doing, good luck&#33;&#33;&#33; If you do this idea... you gotta let me know...lol&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;

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That is a very good idea. It&#39;s amazing what happens when you sit there for a moment and think about all the creative services you could offer with the talents you have and the funds you have to work with.

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Quote[/b] (Team Gopher @ Jan. 15 2008,10:40)]I have a hard time reading a bunch of the bright colors as well on the forum. Many times I find myself highlighting the text with my mouse to read it. Does that help?

Yeah it does help but it gets annoying since I tend to lose my spot when i try to read highlighted text